The European Union launched an Antitrust Complaint against Google over Android. It is a shame that we keep coming back to using antitrust legislation to try to deal with issues of concentration and market power in information industries. We need alternative regulatory tools that are more in line with how computation works and why the properties of information tend to lead to concentration. We want networks and network effects to exist because of their positive externalities. Imagine as a coun...

Shapeways is a partner for Google’s brand new MadeWithCode initiative aimed at getting more girls excited about coding and computational thinking. What is important about this initiative is that it will broaden the understanding of what can be done with code. Code is not just games or websites. Increasingly it is everything and everywhere (even in a long piece on computational thinking in MotherJones). So what I am particularly excited about is how this initiative will introduce a many more p...

One of the many good things about blogging is that one can go back in time and look at one’s own thinking in a more objective way. Without putting it in writing it is all too easy to pretend, as history unfolds, that one had a great understanding way back. Our minds a terrific at rewriting our own thoughts – this tends to come out strongest when we talk about our career paths. One example where I am reasonably happy with my own analysis is acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google. I wrote t...

Last night at dinner while waiting for the food we played the “Google autocomplete game.” Here is how it goes. You go to Google and type the beginning of a search query. Then you tell the others the possible completions and they have to guess which is the most popular (you can even try to guess the whole order – this is loosely based on Family Feud and if you want a more elaborate version check out Google Feud). So when it was Susan’s turn she typed “VCs are” and got this, which is pretty fun...

I wrote before that I am quite bullish on certain professional and niche personal applications of Google Glass but find the adoption strategy puzzling. Having just tried Glass for the first time I feel quite comfortable with both of these assessments which I had made prior to a first hand experience. Glass is easy to wear and operate and the one I tried projected in way that did not force me to look up. I could completely see myself skiing or sailing with Google Glass (wondering if any of the...

Germany’s parliament today passed the highly controversial “Leistungsschutzrecht” which is an ancillary copyright that requires payment for excerpting from and linking to content in some instances. When I walked around in a slight daze at Chicago O'Hare this morning after an all too short red eye flight, my Twitter feed was full of German friends and others outraged about the bill (just look for #lsr). Jeff Jarvis – who spoke out strongly against the law at this year’s DLD conference – i...

Google just acquired DNNresearch, a spinoff company from the University of Toronto led by Geoffrey Hinton. The DNN in the company name stands for deep neural networks. As I have been learning from Professor Hinton’s online course, these are networks with multiple “hidden” layers of neurons. A hidden layer sits between an input and output layer. Hidden layers are responsible for much of the power of modern neural networks and the breakthroughs that have occurred are how to train these hidden l...

I am quite optimistic about the long term potential of augmented reality. But I question whether now is the right time for a top down adoption strategy with a polished consumer product. It seems to me that we are at the hacker and early adopter stage instead. By going with an immediate mass market strategy and embracing celebrities I think Google is taking a very big gamble. Let’s keep in mind that the iPhone was far from the first smart phone. A lot of software and application tinkering had ...

I have for some time pointed out the negative impact on innovation of the appstore duopoly. Things are getting worse though. With the latest releases of iOS and Android the ability of third party developers to create great experiences are being further curtailed in the name of privacy and battery life. That might be OK if Apple and Google didn’t have their own apps that compete for usage such as maps or transportation, but they do. Apple and Google are using the same playbook that Microsoft a...

Two years ago I wrote a blog post titled “Is Google the New Microsoft?” hedging it with a question mark. I think after the announcements at Google IO there can be very little doubt that Google is the new Microsoft. Here is a short check list. Dominant position in one market that generates huge profits: check. Desire to compete in every large market from payments to games to music: check. Extending influence from one market into another by integrating products with each other: check. Abandonin...